C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

See all my books at AllThatChazz.com.

Writers: Publishing Advice Links

Seduced By History: Author One Sheets  ‏One Sheets are a great networking idea.

Accentuate Writers Forum – Writing Contests & Writing Grants

10 Lies that Cripple New Bloggers

Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully: in Ten Minutes with Stephen King. By the way, my favorite book on writing is undoubtedly Stephen King’s On Writing.

Freelance Writing Jobs Network: Traffic Secrets for Writers

 Six Free and Amazing Ways to Promote Your Business

Filed under: blogs & blogging, Publicity & Promotion, publishing, writing tips, , , , , ,

It’s Massive Link Week: Writing, editing, publishing!

Grammar Girl Logo - Mignon Fogarty

Image via Wikipedia

I’m always tweeting updates from great people who are writing really interesting stuff about writing, publishing and editing. This week is (cue drumroll):

MASSIVE LINK WEEK!

I’ve got quite a list of links you can use. Let’s get to it:

The Grammar Girl’s lessons in personal branding for authors‏.

James C. Tanner on The Pros & Cons of Self-Publishing Your Book

The WEbook Blog on The State of Publishing

Internet-Resources.com Writing Links (HUGE!)

More tomorrow!

 

 

 

Filed under: blogs & blogging, publishing, web reviews, writing tips, , , , ,

Problogger: The Key to Starting Your Author Platform

Cover of "ProBlogger: Secrets for Bloggin...

Cover via Amazon

Yesterday I told you that, as a writer who hopes to be an author, you need to start a blog now.

Here’s a tool to get you started: Problogger.net and Darren Rowse and Chris Garrett’s excellent book Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income. 

Rowse is a smart fellow from Australia who teaches people how to start up blogs, optimize them and eventually make money from them. I’m not an affiliate or anything. I just think that this is a very useful book for you to read because he discusses in detail  how to make smart choices about developing your web presence. For instance, should you host it yourself? What are the pros and cons of paying someone else to host your blog? Then he guides you step by step on how to actually make it happen. He talks about Search Engine Optimization (SEO), content, and every other detail you’ll need to achieve lift off.

I’m listening to the audiobook now and I’m enjoying it very much. However, I don’t recommend that you buy the audiobook. There is excellent information available here, but you need to buy the paperback from Amazon because you’ll get lost in the technical aspects of his instruction. Listening to the reader slog through saying, http://etc.,…  is just too much to absorb. It’s not that the book isn’t interesting and engaging. It’s just that the nitty-gritty of the helpful bits is too nitty-gritty if you just listen to it. 

As soon as I’m finished listening to the book, I’m going to buy the hard copy so I can better put his advice into action.

Filed under: blogs & blogging, book reviews, Books, Writers, , ,

Author Platforms: “Resistance is Futile!”

Cover of "Get Known Before The Book Deal:...

Cover via Amazon

It used to be that writers didn’t have to have a platform. Now they do. Resist at your peril because (cue weird Borg voice): 

“Resistance is Futile!”  

There are too many ways our attention is fractured. You must appear in more than one medium to gain attention for your main medium, your book.  

What is a Writer’s Platform?  

There are many routes to take, but the anchor of your media empire should be your blog. From your blog, all the other branches of your interests expand. If you don’t have a blog, people won’t find you.   

Why is a platform so useful?  

I once ran into a fellow who was trying to sell me something. I asked for his website address. He looked at me with resentment and said he wasn’t convinced a website was necessary. All his competitors had websites so I could compare my buying options at my leisure. This poor guy thought he could make a living off impulse buys. People don’t buy most items on impulse anymore. With a search engine it is very easy to research your purchases and buy when you feel you are ready. More and more, people are buying online. In an age of Ferraris, this guy was still in the buggy whip business.   

But what about platforms for authors specifically?  

If you aren’t published yet, your agent or publisher will want you to have a blog, preferably one that’s already established. Even better, a popular blog with a lot of subscribers anxious to buy your book. Your publisher will have a publicist. In my experience, you’re crazy to depend on the publisher’s publicist to do that much for you. Even publishers have recognized this and are putting more and more of the promotion and publicity duties upon authors. Increasingly, publishers are about their distribution network and less and less about everything else.  

What are my platform options?  

Podcasting, vlogging, Twitter, teaching, guest blogging, public speaking, teaching, subscriber newsletters, Facebook, Linked In, Four Square, media appearances, magazine articles, and radio interviews.   

All of the above starts with blogging.  

Book Recommendation: Get Known Before the Book Deal by Christina Katz

 

Filed under: blogs & blogging, Publicity & Promotion, Social Media, , , , ,

It’s a New World. Join the Publishing Revolution

I just added a five-star system so you can rate posts, a Digg button so you can “like” posts and several ways to share posts (Twitter, Facebook, Print, Reddit, Email, etc.,…) Don’t be cruel to a heart that’s true.

Your rare shameless (and fun!) plug begins here:

If you like the blog, please let me and your friends and followers know! Hit the Digg button above the comment box to “like” it. Share on Facebook. Tweet on twitter. I’m above grovelling, but I am willing to ask nicely for your support.

This is the fun part: I have added these buttons in a craven attempt to spread the word about Chazz Writes. I have big plans for the blog. As we get bigger I want to include book reviews, contests for prizes and, ultimately, annex a small tropical island nation whose national drink will be hollowed out pineapples with five kinds of rum. I shall be king, of course, but benevolent in my clothing-optional palace. We’ll be nuclear-weapons free, nuclear-capable, solar and wind-friendly, and establish a very reasonable flat tax. There will be free healthcare for all. We’ll be weed-legalized, jerk-averse and twelve kinds of awesome sexy. And everybody will get a Mac. (Acers for jerks. That’ll teach ’em!) Also, clothes lines are allowed and I’ll keep the needless spending down by force of Nerf bats and exile to lesser, non-Chazz-infused nations. (All that therapy is really nipping my narcissistic megalomania in the bud, huh?) But  I digress…

If you like my stuff, please let other people know. This is a relatively new publishing blog, but I’m not new to publishing. I do have a lot of information to share with writers from a writer’s and editor’s perspective. (Don’t know Chazz and wonder where he gets off talking publishing? Click here.) I just love to talk to people about their writing projects, publishing issues, and that book you’re going to publish some day. Every day I curate the best information on publishing I can find as I search the web for news about writers, interesting stories and stuff that helps writers figure out the best routes to getting published.

I also look for laughs along the way. We need it. The writer’s life can be a grim nobility. Unlike some writing blogs I detest (i.e. a few agent blogs and  angry blogs that mock writers) you are not a minion here. You are a travelling companion and friend. I love books and I love the people who love them.

Return often for updates and keep an eye on that Twitter feed to your right

OR

simply follow me on Twitter @RChazzChute

AND/OR

go to the bottom right and subscribe so you won’t miss a thing!

Like the blurb says:

The publishing revolution has begun.

Join me.

Rare shameless plug ends.

Filed under: blogs & blogging, Publicity & Promotion, publishing, Social Media, Twitter, What about Chazz?, Writers, , ,

Seth Godin Quits Traditional Publishing; Readers Respond

Seth Godin Quits Traditional Publishing; Readers Respond.

Filed under: blogs & blogging, Books, ebooks, publishing, Writers

Publishing Links

Just added Jane Friedman and The Millions to the blog roll. Read them and you’ll see why.

Filed under: blogs & blogging, book reviews, Books, publishing, web reviews, , ,

Vampires, What’s Hot & What Editors Want

Last year the word was, “We’re burnt out on vampires and werewolves! No more! No more!” New York editors say that every second year. Some even go so far as to pronounce the genre dead (despite Salem’s Lot, Anne Rice, Buffy, Team Edward etc.,…) You shouldn’t have believed those pleas from treacherous agents and editors.

Get this: Vampires do not die. Get it? They just don’t.

I just ran across a blog by author/agent Mandy Hubbard that confirms your worst fears about the immortality of the undead. She also drops some science on you about the art that’s coming out and what editors want. Great blog! The magic key to the kingdom right now has the initials MG.*

*BONUS:

I don’t believe in trying to time the market (that goes for the stock market as well as the book market.) However, if you’ve got a manuscript that fits into these trends, you need to send it out again. Keep in mind, what was last year’s laughable proposal might be a hot prospect this year. Keep submitting!

Filed under: agents, blogs & blogging, Editors, publishing, web reviews, , ,

How to Blog on Vacation (and what does evergreen mean?)

blogging on vacation

blogging on vacation

Don’t blog on vacation. That’s why it’s called vacation. Here are some blogging options.

I just had the longest vacation since I was 12, a five-province tour of eastern Canada in which the blog missed not one beat. I updated my Twitter feed on the blog daily so there was always fresh content and useful links. (Twitter is fun and takes so little time, I don’t count it against vacation time. In fact, finding a place to steal WiFi was especially fun.)

The easiest thing to do is write your blog posts before your vacation begins and schedule them ahead of time. You don’t have to publish all your posts immediately. Stretch them out into the future so while you’re lying on a towel on a beach, the blog is updating itself according to your schedule. Seem like too much? It’s not really. Some days you’ll be struck with inspiration and will want to write more than one post. Bank the evergreen* articles.

Next option, get a ghost. Lots of writers are glad to write an article for you, either as a gust blogger or as a paid writer. Company blogs employ professional writers all the time (though this isn’t technically ghosting. It falls into the category of corporate communications, no matter how breezy a company may want a blog to sound.) If you have a following, a guest blog entry is a nice way for new bloggers to have their voice heard, with links back to their own blog, of course.

There are several options. Don’t blog on vacation. You never want your blog to feel like work. That’s why I can say, “Glad to be back!”

*An evergreen article is a post that is not time-sensitive. The latest drop in a particular stock on the Nasdaq is not evergreen. A timeless post on your feelings about your grandmother’s Holocaust experience is evergreen.

Filed under: blogs & blogging, Twitter, , ,

Bestseller with over 1,000 reviews!
Winner of the North Street Book Prize, Reader's Favorite, the
Literary Titan Award, the Hollywood Book Festival, and the
New York Book Festival.

http://mybook.to/OurZombieHours
A NEW ZOMBIE ANTHOLOGY

Winner of Writer's Digest's 2014 Honorable Mention in Self-published Ebook Awards in Genre

The first 81 lessons to get your Buffy on

More lessons to help you survive Armageddon

"You will laugh your ass off!" ~ Maxwell Cynn, author of Cybergrrl

Available now!

Fast-paced terror, new threats, more twists.

An autistic boy versus our world in free fall

Suspense to melt your face and play with your brain.

Action like a Guy Ritchie film. Funny like Woody Allen when he was funny.

Jesus: Sexier and even more addicted to love.

You can pick this ebook up for free today at this link: http://bit.ly/TheNightMan

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